The Anti SUV Portal
(or why I think SUVs suck)

As this issue affects our quality of life, our environment, our politics, our relations with other countries and much, much more, I'm compelled to maintain this site. Exercising our great country's freedom of speech! Please read the disclaimer, and enjoy learning.

THIS SITE BELIEVES INFORMATION, FACTS, AND KNOWLEDGE ALONE ARE THE BEST TOOLS FOR OVERCOMING IGNORANCE AND IMPROVING THE WORLD WE ALL SHARE. THIS SITE DOES NOT ADVOCATE DAMAGING PROPERTY, AND IS COMPLETELY AGAINST ACTS OF VIOLENCE.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE IS A GOOD THING; INFORMED, EDUCATED CHOICES ARE AN EVEN BETTER THING!

Facts below aren't good enough for you? Check out our government's sites: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/ | http://www.epa.gov/

 
SUVS IN THE NEWS | READER FEEDBACK | DISCLAIMER
MY REASONS: THE FACTS: RESOURCES & SOURCES:

SUVs harm environment

And precious resources are wasted creating them instead of being invested in fuel-efficient technologies - how sad!
  • Switching from an average new car to a 13 mpg SUV for a year would waste more energy than leaving a refrigerator door open for six years, a bathroom light burning for 30 years, or a color TV turned on for 28 years.
  • SUVs spew out 43 percent more global-warming pollutants - 28 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon of gas consumed - and 47 percent more air pollution than the average car, using 1 million barrels of oil a day.
  • from the EPA: In the United States, approximately 6.6 tons (almost 15,000 pounds carbon equivalent) of greenhouse gases are emitted per person every year. And emissions per person have increased about 3.4% between 1990 and 1997. Most of these emissions, about 82%, are from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and power our cars. The remaining emissions are from methane, from wastes in our landfills, raising livestock, natural gas pipelines, and coal, as well as from industrial chemicals and other sources.
  • Leading climatologists predict the temperature of the planet could increase by 5 degrees this century; extinction is forecast for vulnerable animals and plants across more than 1/3 of the Earth's natural habitat. Estimates are that concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will double from pre-industrial levels during this century. Some projections suggest a three-fold increase in concentrations by 2100 unless action is taken to rein in the inefficient use of coal, oil and gas for energy production.
  • Americans contribute 25 percent of the world's human-generated carbon dioxide

People who buy SUVs are irresponsible

They support poor safety & fuel economy, and low emissions instead of innovative fuel-efficient vehicles.
  • Because SUVs are permitted to emit 29% to 47% more carbon monoxide (CO) and 75% to 175% more nitrogen oxides (NOx) (as well as other pollutants) than passenger cars, they contribute far more towards the health and environmental degredation on our planet - how can someone supporting this be a responsible and concerned person?
  • "[other drivers] want to be in control in terms of safety, being able to park and maneuver in traffic, being able to get elderly people in and out," said Fred J. Schaafsma, a vehicle development engineer for General Motors. "SUV owners want to be more like ‘I'm in control of the people around me."' This is an important reason why seats are mounted higher in sport utilities than in minivans, he said.
  • "Our approach to SUVs and the environment has not always been responsible," William Clay Ford Jr., Company Chairman

SUVs force us to be an overly oil-dependent nation and too reliant upon foreign sources of oil

Need any more be said about the connection between terrorism & America's thirst for oil?

  • OPEC members control 3/4's of the world's oil reserves, Saudia Arabia alone controls a quarter of the total. The US has 11 years worth of oil reserves while Saudia Arabia has 261.8 years, and Iraq has 100. **

  • Unocal, a California oil corp., is involved in a joint venture with Burma's brutal and repressive Junta military regime. The military maintains its stranglehold on Burma's people by using weapons bought with foreign currency gained in partnerships with multinational oil companies. In 1995, Unocal signed a contract with the junta to extract and transport natural gas using a pipeline from the undersea Yadana\ Field located off Burma's coast. Ethnic minorities have been under attack by the junta's troops which are seeking to suppress rebellion and use civilians for forced labor on army projects. Thousands of people have been forcibly relocated and their homes and farms destroyed by the junta's troops. Unocal executives have been callous when confronted with accounts of this human rights abuse. "If you threaten the pipeline, there's gonna be more military," said Unocal's President John Imle. Email Unical at crp@unocal.com and tell them what you think.

  • **source: The Economist, 6/29/02

SUVs have poor emissions

Want to be really patriotic? DON'T buy an SUV!
  • Depite great improvements in recent years, California's air quality still violates health-based state and federal air quality standards in regions throughout the state. When emissions standards were originally set in California for "light trucks," including SUVs, these vehicles were primarily used for work purposes. Less stringent emissions standards were created for these vehicles because they were presumed to have more rigorous operating conditions. Today, light trucks (including SUVs) are almost 50% of the vehicles in California. This unprecedented growth in sales has seriously altered the light truck vehicle emissions category and has had a disastrous effect on air quality. Jerry Martin, spokesperson for the CARB has said that "[SUVs] are the station wagons of the '90's (because) they're being used as cars, we feel they ought to be regulated as cars."
  • Federal law permits SUVs to waste 33 percent more gasoline than passenger cars. SUVs can spew 30+ percent more carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons and 75+ percent more nitrogen oxides than passenger cars. Since 1990, the inefficiency of light trucks (including SUVs) have led to Americans wasting an extra 70 billion gallons of gasoline.
  • How automakers save money with SUVs: They decided in the mid-1980s that they were going to build more light trucks to take advantage of all the regulatory loopholes and were able to do so very cheaply, even though they didn't have a lot of truck engineers. Ford had 12,000 car engineers and 400 light truck engineers in 1983, for example. What did they do? They took the steel underbodies of the pickup trucks and simply lowered onto them different passenger compartments and bolted them on. ... It was very cheap. You could build pickups and SUVs on the same assembly line.

SUVs are dangerous

Like an arms race: we feel we need larger vehicles just to protect ourselves from the other big ones.
  • An average SUV or a pickup is more than twice as likely as a car to kill the driver of the other vehicle in a collision.
  • SUVs are four times more likely than cars to roll over in an accident.
  • SUVs are three times more likely to kill the occupants in a rollover.
  • Light trucks/SUVs crashing into cars accounts for the majority of fatalities in vehicle-to-vehicle collisions, 2,000 people would still be alive if their vehicles had been hit by a heavy car instead of an SUV.
  • 80 percent of drivers strongly feel that automakers should make safety changes to SUVs that would make the roads safer for car occupants.

 

 

"Mindless American consumerism and vapid status acquisition"

The anti-SUV movement is gaining momentum among the young, smart and well-educated... the current SUV fad will hopefully be replaced by something better for all of us.
  • "The all too common image of [a lone driver running a simple errand] in a bloated gas guzzling behemoth is enraging those citizens who have a sliver of conscience regarding their lifestyle and the environment. Those who have a legitimate need for these gas hogs, business people who have to haul stuff around and really need the automotive version of the Exxon Valdez to do it should be spared. That leaves 95% of the SUV's on the road that never get dirty or use their 4 wheel drive as fair game." (source: Changing the Climate - couldn't have said it better myself!)
  • from the Sierra Club: Auto-industry advertising portrays SUVs as the ticket to freedom and the great outdoors. Commercials depict them climbing massive snow-capped mountains or tearing through desert sand dunes, taking their owners into the wild. In reality, the only off-road action many of these vehicles see is accidentally driving through a flower bed next to the driveway. Missing from these ads are other contributions from SUVs—the brown haze of air pollution hanging over many of our national parks, images of weather disasters linked to global warming or the oil derricks and tankers needed to feed gas-guzzling SUVs. In contrast to Detroit's carefully crafted image, SUVs have a dark side.

good resource:

Low emissions and good fuel economy are both important for the environment. This guide will help you choose the cleanest and most fuel efficient vehicle that meets your needs: http://www.epa.gov/autoemissions/

  
one of the best anti-suv quotes:

"If you want sporty, get a sports car. If you want utility, get a truck. If you just want a vehicle, get a car."

 

Sites that link to this site include:

Ah, so you made it to the bottom, I'm proud of you. Perhaps I've underestimated you? THANK YOU for taking the time to read this and to care about the many problems to which buying and driving an SUV contributes. Please forward this to as many people as possible.

Am I way off base? Of course I think not... I've read the anti-anti-suv propoganda out there and am not convinced, but if you disagree with any of my statements, quotes, or ideas herein, please enlighten me and drop me an email at suv_suck@yahoo.com

Even if you are driving a "small" SUV, you're still contributing to the industry that produces these wasteful machines instead of fuel-efficient vehicles. Your dollar is your vote and you could be encouraging more responsible behaviour... The choice is yours. Our decisions as consumers affect much more than we sometimes realize - and thus we need to accept responsibility for our decisions!! If we don't demand cleaner, safer vehicles, then they'll never be made. We need to use our purchasing power to send the message as well as push for improved environmental standards to force the auto industry to make better vehicles.

 
 

Want to read more? Gosh, where do I begin? I've been tempted to include stories about growing up in the 70's in the snowbelt outside of Buffalo, NY and how we managed to survive - kids, pets, and all in a simple CAR! Or about how much I laughed when all those idiots broke their SUV axels trying to plow through snowbanks (just like they had seen in the commercials!) a few years ago when a big storm hit Chicago.

And then there is the "Mazda Miracle" - the story of how our trusty little Mazda 323 hatchback (purchased new in 1989 for $6000 - that is another point I didn't even make, you SUV fools, you are wasting your money and contributing to the fact that Americans carry more debt than anyone else!) managed to successfully take us out of a terrible snowstorm in Arizona near the Grand Canyon on January 2, 2000 while all the other tanks on the road were stuck for hours on I-80. We stopped at a gas station and the cashier said, "Looks like you'll have to get a room", but we took the Mazda on unplowed dirt roads for 25 miles and escaped both the storm and the traffic. Yay for the Mazda!

Having strong and good anti-SUV sentiments doesn't make me perfect, I know: I love to drive and I speed and I'm the first to admit that both don't help many of the problems listed above, but I'm trying to slow down, really I am and I use my bike when possible. We try to keep the cars (our '86 Volvo sedan and '89 Mazda hatchback) in clean running order (just got a new catalytic converter for the Mazda) and to date they've passed the California "smog test" with flying colors. By the way, in either car we can drive for at least 350 miles before having to fill up! How about that?!

Certain people would have the audacity... to suggest that my SUV hatred stems from jealousy because we drive two normal cars... but to them I say, NO, NO, NO! My dream would be to have a hybrid or an electric car, but unfortunately they're not affordable because the automotive industry caters to the SUV market and hasn't been doing work on the important fuel efficient vehicles.

Now can't you agree that SUVs really suck? And I'm not normally a person who likes to use that "suck" word. It boggles the mind that people would WANT to pay more for gas - and with gas prices on the rise in recent years, the poor commuters (especially in California, people who can't afford to live in the expensive Bay Area - teachers, nurses, police, etc.- and who are forced to commute obscene distances) they are the ones who have to pay the high gasoline prices, prices that have been jacked up by people who apparently don't care about gas-guzzling their dollars away in order to drive their wasteful, ugly, road-hogging, dangerous, polluting SUVs (I could go on with the adjectives, but I think - HOPE - you got the point!)

More links:

 
 

For all you who DO agree wholeheartedly with me, please help me by sending corrections, additional information, ways I could make this ramble-rant-a-thon more concise and effective, or anything else you feel is relevant to: suv_suck@yahoo.com

Thank you!

  
    Important Note: for people who really need larger vehicles to transport huge amounts of stuff or those who really need to 4-wheel on dirt roads (perhaps you are an alligator hunter?), then I'm all for you having what you need to get your job done. Still check out http://www.epa.gov/autoemissions/ because a 4Runner is a heck of a lot better than an Expedition!
 
 
 
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All cartoons taken from: http://www.idontcareaboutair.com/humour/index.shtml with credits listed there - check out their site for even more cartoons.

Minis rock!